What Really Was the Women’s March?

You all have heard something about the march – whether it be positive or negative. You probably even know someone who went to one, considering there were over 600 sister marches. I went to the march in D.C. with my mom, cousin, and aunt while staying with my godfather and his family – just a few metro stops from where the march occurred.

Photo of a woman who attended the women’s march by Josephine Celeste.

The day of the Women’s March on Washington, we carried our posters and wore our pussy hats as we walked to the metro to go down to the march as people sitting on their porches smile, wave, and cheer us on. The police man told us to walk down to the back of the station because the metro might be less packed in the back. He was wrong – it was packed everywhere. When we finally got to our stop, it took us an hour and a half to get out of the station due to how many people there were.

What could have been an extremely dangerous, possibly deadly, experience was actually a peaceful pre-march march; we all sang and chanted and smiled and laughed as we were pushed up against each other in a hot metro station. At the mach, I was surprised, not only by the all-around peacefulness, but even the lack of police there. I can count the number of police I saw all day on my hands. I only see three Trump supporters all day, too.

It is remarkable how many elderly women there are marching along side me. This is something they have been having to protest their whole lives. It is also admirable to see all the men and children that were there.

So why are people questioning if the march was actually a good thing? Some think the march was just a one-hit wonder– meaning, yes, that was the largest protest in American history and it occurred on all seven continents in one day, but what now?

Well, don’t worry. The four women who organized the Women’s March have a website where they post an action you can do every 10 days for the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. For example, you can write a postcard to your local senator (for Ohio residents, that would be either Sherrod Brown or Rob Portman).

Critics think the march had too broad a range of goals by having people there with signs for Black Lives Matter, Muslims, pro-choice, and LGBTQIA+ rights; however, the march website really didn’t specify what you had to be marching for. Rather, it listed 5 principles for you to remember when marching– such as peacefulness.

Some people were offended by the worldwide phenomenon of pussy hats – pink hat knit to be square so when you wear it, it looks like pussy cat ears as a reference to President Trump’s “grab her by the pussy” comment– that went along with the marches. These hats gave a way for people who could not attend one of the marches a way to still be connected and are not meant to be offensive.

In my eyes, the march was a success– it showed that we are not ready to back down and this is only the beginning. The woman behind the pussy hats said it best: “In order to get fair treatment, the answer is not to deny our femaleness and femininity, the answer is to demand fair treatment.” I think this goes along with all the reasons people were marching, showing that you should not yet give up.

This is not just about women’s rights, or blacks’ rights, or Muslims’ rights.